Exploring social policy through culture

1950s

Post navigation

I have an academic interest in utopias. Imagination is often underplayed in social policy, but, to me, creating future worlds is an inevitable product of redistributing resources in the present. A current fantasy of mine, in a near-future Utopia is that one of my favourite authors has read my blog and deliberately uses the motif of Doris Day as a ploy, so that I write about her work. Atwood understands the technology, the communication networks and the soft power of blogging. The tens of views my blog regularly receives means she could find a new audience of social workers and policy researchers previously considered ‘hard to reach’[1].

My imagination is not complete enough to detail fully the symbiotic relationship between academic and author that would flourish in the near future, but I can at least flatter myself that Atwood (or Margaret as I call her when we text and email) have a shared understanding of the complexity and nuance that the seemingly innocent image of Doris Day can evoke. Continue reading →